John Darnielle, the driving force behind The Mountain Goats, has shared a non-album track from 2004's We Shall All Be Healed titled "You & Me & A High Balcony." Darnielle, on Tumblr, shared the track, which had been talking about earlier on Twitter. He discovered the track himself while "cleaning the office" (scarequotes his), finding a disc of tracks recorded in 2002 at Bear Creek for the album.
Here's some of what he had to say about the track and why it didn't make the album:
It audibly doesn’t really belong with the songs from We Shall All Be Healed: it shares some themes (meth, tawdry motels) but is formally in a pretty different ballpark and it’s also not very personal, whereas the songs that did end up making We Shall All Be Healed marked my first steps toward writing from direct experience.
The Mountain Goats will release a remastered edition of All Hail West Texason July 23 via Merge Records.
Also, John Darnielle, please "clean the office" more often. Thank you.